The Immigrant's Trail

Last month, as immigrants and their supporters geared up for the May 1 "Day Without Immigrants," and the Senate considered another comprehensive immigration bill, an 18-year-old Mexican woman gave birth amid the cactus and mesquite trees of the Arizona desert. Under the searing sun 25 miles north of the Mexican border, the young mother cut the umbilical cord with a nail clipper before she was rescued by a Border Patrol helicopter. Mother and baby survived the ordeal — the child as a United States citizen.

While the halls of Washington echo with debates over guest-worker programs, border fences and amnesty, hundreds of untold human dramas unfold along the Southwest’s borderlands and in communities across the West. Economic forces push and pull hundreds of thousands each year to hit the trail north, risking everything for a taste of opportunity.

Such stories of desperation and hope have played out in various forms since the earliest immigrants first flocked to the West to reap its promise of abundance. The latest chapter in the drama began in 1986, when Congress passed the Immigration Reform Act in the hope of stanching undocumented immigration. In the years since, however, the flow has only increased. Last year, the issue at last exploded into the political and media spotlight.

In August, the governors of New Mexico and Arizona responded by declaring states of emergency. More recently, state legislatures have considered dozens of bills on immigration, ranging from denying public services to undocumented immigrants to offering them in-state tuition at colleges and universities.

In Washington, D.C., the House of Representatives passed a bill that would beef up security along the border and criminalize undocumented immigration, now just a civil offense. The Senate responded with a compromise bill, currently stalled, that combines increased enforcement measures with a guest-worker program and a path to legalization for the 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States.

As each side of the debate gels, strange alliances form: Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy and President George W. Bush go hand-in-hand in support of a guest-worker program, while conservative Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., finds himself allied against immigration with green-leaning former Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm, D, who worries about overpopulation and its environmental consequences. Leftist human rights activists stand beside corporate CEOs, arguing in favor of immigration rights and hoping enforcement won’t go too far.

Faced with this morass of ideology and emotion, High Country News turned, as it often does, to the stories of people on the ground in the West, from the Mexican state of Sonora to the farm country of eastern Washington. If we learned anything during this journey, it’s not that immigration is good, bad or something in between. Rather, it’s that current immigration policy is indeed a failure: Millions are undocumented, living in the shadows here, and nearly a half-million more arrive each year. A border fence may slow the flow, but it can’t stop it, and even a guest-worker program is only a partial fix. A few of the bills and ballot initiatives pondered by Western states may provide some local relief, but they won’t begin to touch the larger problem.

The solutions, if there are any, lie in fundamentally altering the root causes of immigration. And that isn’t likely to happen until the decision-makers in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City understand that the issue goes far beyond the border the two nations uncomfortably share. There are huge forces moving people north. And those forces — rooted in the capitalistic urges of global supply and demand — will overwhelm any walls and laws we throw at them.

If that’s clear anywhere, it’s out in the Arizona desert, where an expectant young woman ventured into a desolate land of heat and rocks, risking everything so that her child would never be called "illegal."

U.S. fish and Wildlife Service Officer John Schaefer is one of only two officers patrolling the 860,000 acres of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, a thoroughfare for illegal immigrants and armed drug smugglers

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I agree with Gov. Dick Lamb's concerns about
over-population. Why is it so difficult to understand that "eternal
human growth" & consumption rates will degrade our standard of
living? It is apparent that Mexico is a "dead end " dysfunctional
country that views America as a "excess population pressure relief
value". Send your surplus humans north! The population issue is
usually not mentioned in the illegal immigration debate. Most
organized religions are ecological & biological deaf, dumb and
blind in their failure to understand that the earth has a finite
human carrying capacity. As any wise rancher knows, a finite parcel
of land can only support a finite number of cattle. As Mexico is
predominately a Catholic Country, population control is not in
their lexicon.

cntrygal@heart

May 16, 2006 01:24 PM

WOW, Exactly as MD Wilson said. We cannot take
everyone into this country and have the quality of life that we
have enjoyed. Our resources are limited. Water is disappearing at
an alarming rate just check out Lake Powell and our gasoline
situation is at a critical point. We have to exercise the oxygen
mask theory. We have to take care of ourselves first before we can
take care of everyone else. Hurricane Katrina was a disgrace and an
embarrassment. We cannot even help our own country in one of it's
greatest times of need, how can we conscienciously keep taking more
people in?? These ILLEGAL immigrants have shown that they do not
want to assimilate they want to take back what was stolen from
them. They have DVDs given out in Mexico how to come to America and
collect benefits!! Right now there is a song by the Great Merle
Haggard and it's called America First it's exactly what everyone is
feeling. We have people in this Nation that are starving and can't
earn a decent wage what about them?? Why aren't we helping
them??

Anonymous

May 29, 2007 11:27 AM

yall are all just jealous cuz u know that mexicans
will work low wages. And americans wont. Mexico needs our
help.